Weston, Corso Italia, Kodak Heights

York

The smallest and most densely working-class of the six municipalities that merged into Toronto in 1998 — home to a former Kodak film plant and one of the city's most enduring Italian-Canadian communities.

Weston Park in the former City of York, Toronto
Weston Park, Toronto — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

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Of the six municipalities that merged into Toronto in 1998, York was the smallest by area and among the most consistently working-class — a compact strip running roughly along the rail corridor northwest of downtown, distinct from both the affluent stretches and the newer immigrant-heavy suburbs covered in our other former-municipality guides.

From York Township to the Town of Weston

York Township traces back to the original 1793 survey of what became Toronto, making its name older than the current city's. The separate Town of Weston, centred where Weston Road crosses the Humber River, merged with York Township on January 1, 1967, forming the Borough of York — later a full city in 1983.

Kodak Heights

York's Mount Dennis neighbourhood was home to Kodak Heights, a major Eastman Kodak film manufacturing plant that opened in 1916 and was one of the area's largest employers for decades — alongside older brickyards, sawmills and gravel pits that defined the neighbourhood's industrial character long before it became one of the city's most ethnically diverse communities.

Corso Italia and a strong Italian-Canadian identity

The St. Clair Avenue West strip running through the former City of York, known as Corso Italia, has been one of Toronto's most visible Italian-Canadian commercial districts since postwar Italian immigration concentrated there — cafés, salumerias and social clubs that still anchor the neighbourhood's identity today, alongside the newer waves of immigration documented in our ethnic enclaves guide.

Amalgamation

York merged into Toronto on January 1, 1998 along with Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York, East York and old Toronto — see our full amalgamation history for the wider picture.

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